


An Irrevocable Condition

by SouthSideStory



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Post-Chapter 699, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 00:20:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3670527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthSideStory/pseuds/SouthSideStory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Love, Sakura

Home is not a place you can leave behind; home is a thing you carry with you, as real as the travel pack on your back, and just as heavy.

Sasuke first discovered this when he abandoned Konoha. Only once he was away, surrounded by strangers, did he realize that the lilt of the Hidden Leaf was branded in his voice. At night he would lie on his side and dream of people best forgotten: Iruka-sensei, the Sandaime, the rookies, Naruto and Kakashi and Sakura. (Sakura most of all, but he didn’t allow himself to read much into this.) He came to hate those visions worse than his nightmares. It hurt more, for some reason, to see the things he gave up than the things that were taken from him.

And later, as he traveled the world, Sasuke found pieces of home in the most foreign of places. He saw Naruto’s spirit and Sakura’s kindness in the hospitality of strangers. Bowls of ramen and copies of _Icha Icha_ books and cherry blossom trees reminded him of those he had left behind for a second time.

Today he sits at a table in a River Country inn, rereading the last letter Sakura sent him. The paper is worn, the creases softened from many foldings and unfoldings. She wrote to him about the efforts to restore Konoha to its former glory, her work opening a clinic for children, how everything seems to be starting over, rebuilding and remaking, not unlike Sasuke himself. She signed it “Love, Sakura,” and now he traces the characters that make up her name.

In his pack there are seventeen letters from Sakura, nine from Naruto, four from Kakashi, and he has read and reread all of them more times than he can count. Naruto’s messages are nearly illegible, riddled with grammar mistakes, full of an unfailing optimism. Kakashi’s are short, to the point, written in a hurry. But Sakura’s letters are something else. Her handwriting is precise and feminine, and he can imagine the care she put into each sentence, can practically see it in every line of ink.

Sasuke is (was) ambidextrous, so he can write well with his right hand, just as fluently and neatly as he could have with his left. It was not his missing arm that made him wary to respond. Still, he wrote back, answered every letter diligently. All but this last, all but the one he holds in his hand now. He received it two weeks ago, when he was helping a family in the Earth Country build a barn.

There are sixteen letters in his pack from Sakura, and every one she signed with her name alone. Not this one, though. This one she signed with ink-and-paper love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the first piece in a post-699 series I’m writing about Sasuke’s return to Konoha. The summary is a quote from Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. Also, many thanks to my lovely beta uchihasass for looking over this!


	2. Rebirth

The chunin at the gate gapes at Sasuke before letting him inside, and as he walks through the streets, civilians and shinobi alike stare and whisper to one another.

Konoha has changed since he last saw it. Shops and apartments have sprung up all over the place, and the shine of fresh paint is beginning to wear off. There is still a sense of newness about the buildings, an unseasoned quality which reminds Sasuke that this is not the village he once knew.

A chubby Hyuuga child of six or seven runs into him and falls to the ground. Sasuke helps him to his feet, and when the boy sees his face, sees the rinnegan, his blank, pale eyes grow wider. There is already a mark on his smooth forehead, green as grass. Enforced obedience burned into a child’s skin.

So some things haven’t changed—even if they should.

Sasuke walks on, taking in the elements of the village that are different, that remain the same.

It’s awful but true that he’s happy the Uchiha compound was destroyed when Pain invaded. All that place held for him were memories of slaughter, of blood and death. Anything sweet that came before (his mother’s laughter, his father’s rare smile, riding on Itachi’s back) was overwhelmed by grief. The compound is gone, new life will be built over the ground where it stood, and Sasuke is glad of it.

He can smell spring in the air: the sharp scent of freshly mown lawns and the wet aroma that follows a good rain. Everywhere he looks he sees greenery and budding flowers. Sasuke plucks a blossom from the low-hanging branch of an apple tree and pockets it, feels the satin softness of a petal between his thumb and forefinger.

“Sasuke-kun?”

He turns at the sound of his name and spots Hinata a few paces behind him. She smiles and says, “You’re back.”

“I am.” Then, because he feels he ought to apologize, Sasuke says, “I’m sorry I missed the wedding.”

Hinata shrugs. “Don’t worry about it. He understood.”

This doesn’t surprise him. Naruto, for all his thick-headedness, has a knack for knowing Sasuke’s own heart before Sasuke himself does. So perhaps his friend could guess why, six months ago, he didn’t feel ready to return to the Leaf.

His demons live in Konoha. It is the site of his family’s destruction, of many of his greatest mistakes. The source of his nightmares as much as his dreams. He will never love this village the way he once did, before Danzo’s orders and Itachi’s blade stole Otousan and Okaasan from him. And Sasuke is afraid, too, that coming back will bring out the worst in him. The elders still live, and there is a part of him (larger than he would like to admit) that wants vengeance.

But it isn’t hate that brought him home. Seventeen letters drew him across the miles, over deserts and seas and mountains. Caught him by the heart and slowly lured him in. 


	3. Missing

She hears the news from Moegi: Uchiha Sasuke walked through the Konoha gates no more than an hour ago.

Sakura drops the glass of water she was drinking, hears it shatter against the white tile. She looks down and sees the mess she has made: glass fragments bleeding water all across the hospital’s sterile floor.

“I’ll clean it up,” Moegi says. “You should go.”

She has been up all night, and there’s still an hour left of her graveyard shift, but Sakura can’t find it in herself to care. She thanks Moegi and runs.

She doesn’t trust rumors and hear-say, and she fears that this news is wrong. Even so, Sakura can’t help but think, _He’s come back to us. Come back to me_. First, she speaks to Kakashi and learns that Sasuke is indeed in the village; he already came by the Hokage’s office and asked to be reinstated as a Konoha shinobi.

“So he’s really here?” Sakura asks.

Kakashi nods. “He’s really here.”

She goes to Naruto and Hinata’s house only to find it empty. Sakura roams the streets, looking for a shock of black hair, a tall silhouette lacking a left arm. Nothing. Now desperate, she even checks the fruit vendors in the market square, thinking he might have stopped to buy tomatoes. _He has to be here somewhere. Konoha is only so big._

Sakura stops, sits on a stone bench, and puts her head in her hands. She’s spent so much time waiting for him to come home and _stay_ —four years after he abandoned the village, another three while he searched for his redemption—and now that he’s finally here she can’t even find him. It’s fitting, really, because she has been chasing after Sasuke for half her life with no success. Why should today be any different?

She feels a masculine presence settle beside her on the bench, and a moment later she hears him say, “Hello, Sakura.”

Without considering the consequences, she sits up and throws her arms around Sasuke, hugs him as fiercely as she can. He smells of pine and woodsmoke and dust, like forests and fire and dirt roads well-traveled. He is impossibly warm and impossibly _here_ , and she has never, not once in her life, felt more thankful than she does in this moment.

Slowly, tentatively, Sasuke wraps his right arm around her waist, rests his hand on the small of her back. He buries his face in her hair, and Sakura suddenly wishes that she hadn’t spent all night at the hospital. She must look frightful and smell like antiseptics.

They stay like this for a long time, just holding one another, until Sasuke pulls away. She lets go, if reluctantly, and says, “I missed you.”

Three little words, meant to encompass the breadth of seven years’ loneliness. They don’t even come close.

He makes a gesture like he means to cup her cheek, but withdraws his hand before the movement can come to life.

“Did you find it?” Sakura asks. “The peace you were looking for?”

Sasuke looks away, looks toward the horizon, and she can sense before he speaks that he is not satisfied. That whatever he sought remains out of reach.

“I don’t know if there’s any such thing as peace,” he says. “There’s the time between wars, like now, but there’s still violence, still hate and ugliness. As for me, I think I could wander for a thousand years and never redeem myself.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Sakura asks, and she can feel the weight of fear settling in her stomach. “Because you’ve given up?”

“No.” Sasuke reaches into his pocket, pulls out a wilting apple blossom and a folded up piece of paper. “This is the last letter you sent me. I’ve probably read it a dozen times, trying to decide whether or not to come home.”

“Why did you?” Sakura’s breath seems to be caught somewhere near her heart.

He opens the letter, folds it in half, opens it again. “Because you’re important to me. Because I’ve missed you too. Because I’m tired of running away from the people who love me.”

“So you’re staying?” Sakura asks. “You’re back for good?”

It’s a subtle expression, and anyone who didn’t know him might miss it, but Sasuke smiles when he says, “I’m home.”

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the first piece in a post-699 series I’m writing about Sasuke’s return to Konoha. The summary is a quote from Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. Also, many thanks to my lovely beta uchihasass for looking over this!


End file.
